With the news of DJ Walton's arrest and dismissal from the football team, that time-honored question returns: how many chances should a football player get before he is dismissed from the team? I don't know the answer, but I do know one thing: Frank Beamer gives players lots and lots of chances, often to the detriment of his team and the university.

Someone asked me this past weekend, "If you were the coach, would Marcus Vick still be on the team?" I expounded how Vick had made many mistakes, three to be exact, and had paid his penance and appeared to be on the right track. "If he stays out of trouble and has a good season," I noted, "it will be the comeback story of the year in college football. The press will be all over it."

"You didn't answer my question," was the response. "If you were the coach, would he still be on the team?"

We were interrupted before I could answer that question, and as a matter of fact, we were interrupted before I could even figure out what my answer is.

It used to be easy. Safely ensconced in my cloak of certainty and passing down judgment without all the facts, I used to feel that any player that got in trouble should be dismissed from the team, without ceremony, permanently. Virginia Tech's reputation should be protected at all costs.

Years ago, events supported this stance. Linebacker Tony Morrison and wide receiver James Crawford became embroiled in the Christy Brzonkala rape case way back in 1995, a case that played itself out on the national stage and gave Virginia Tech a black eye for the better part of two years.

Despite the firestorm of negative publicity and the seriousness of the allegations, Morrison remained on Virginia Tech's football team. Given a second chance, Morrison was later charged with drunk and disorderly conduct and destruction of property in an incident in downtown Blacksburg. Given a third chance, Morrison missed curfew and was suspended late in the 1996 season. Morrison was finally dismissed from the football team in March of 1997 after what seemed like an endless string of bad behavior and bad press.

Crawford was also given a second chance after the Brzonkala story erupted, and he was later charged with hit and run when he, shall we say, forcibly removed his car from the Tek Tow impound lot. (Never mind that if you've ever been towed by Tek Tow, you'd like to do the same.) Given a third chance, Crawford, along with fullback Brian Edmonds, was charged with rape in late 1996. Like Morrison, Crawford was finally dismissed from the team.

The Morrison and Crawford situations established a pattern of very little retribution for player misbehavior back in the mid-90s, and the result was a never-ending stream of player arrests, from a simple hit-and-run charge on kicker John I. Thomas to a nasty incident in 1996 known forever as the Blacksburg Brawl, in which eight VT football players were eventually charged with beating VT track athlete Hilliard Sumner and a friend.

Simply put, back in the mid-90s, the Virginia Tech football program appeared to be completely out of control, taking a big black eye in the national press at the same time they were going to two straight Alliance Bowls and establishing the program.

Back then, I raged at Frank Beamer's lax discipline. So did everyone else, to the point where VT President Paul Torgersen commissioned Athletic Director Dave Braine to put together a committee of people to draft Tech's now-famous Comprehensive Action Plan, the document governing the behavior of student-athletes at VT.

The CAP, as it is called, is a good idea in theory � laying out guidelines for how the athletic department will respond, depending upon what an athlete is charged with, and whether or not that athlete is convicted � and it created some positive national press and warm, fuzzy feelings at a time when Virginia Tech needed those things. But in practice, the CAP has been fairly toothless, most notably in the case of Derrius Monroe. Monroe pled guilty in August of 2000 to felony cocaine possession, a reduced charge from an original charge of cocaine distribution, and despite the fact that the CAP clearly states that "Any student-athlete convicted of or pleading guilty or no contest to a felony charge or a game fixing charge under Virginia law or any other jurisdictional equivalent shall be permanently dismissed from the team," Monroe was later reinstated to the Tech football team and played in 2001.

Monroe's case was one of VT Athletic Director Jim Weaver (who was Western Michigan's AD when the CAP was written) deciding, for whatever reason, that there was a loophole in the CAP that could be exploited to Monroe's benefit. After pleading guilty, Monroe was put on probation, had to perform 100 hours of community service, underwent substance-abuse assessment, and had to stay alcohol and drug free. Monroe met all conditions of his probation and was released from his probation a year earlier than scheduled in 2001, and the charges and his guilty plea were wiped from his record. The fact that Monroe's record was wiped clean is the loophole that was used to reinstate him.

So despite his guilty plea, Monroe was able to play again for VT. His story ended well. He got his degree from Virginia Tech and was drafted in April of 2002 by the New Orleans Saints. Given a second chance, Monroe made the most of it, unlike Morrison and Crawford, who continued to make mistakes and trash Virginia Tech's reputation in the process.

There are other such stories in the annals of recent VT football history, the most prominent being Marcus Vick, who is now on his fourth chance. In addition to pleading no contest for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and being convicted of reckless driving and possession of marijuana, Vick was suspended for the JMU game in 2003 for violation of team rules. That's more chances than Morrison and Crawford got, and Vick's multiple chances led to copious amounts of bad publicity for VT in 2004. But his story may yet end happily, like Monroe's.

In the years since the CAP was written, it seems that the prevailing methodology is still one of permissiveness, second chances, and decisions made by the seat of the pants, Vick's being the most famous and Monroe's being an example of one that flew right in the face of the letter of the CAP.

And now we come to the case of DJ Walton, who last week was arrested and charged with four counts of robbery, four counts of abduction and four counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Walton, you'll recall, received two DUIs in rapid succession back in 2003 and was convicted of both, leading to jail time. He was dismissed from the team in 2003 but was allowed back in 2004, albeit as a non-scholarship player. Walton played in just two games last season, against WMU and FAMU.

Like the others before him, DJ Walton received a second chance (or a third, depending upon how you count the DUIs), and like some others before him, he blew it in spectacular fashion, winning hands down in a game of can-you-top-this against Morrison, Crawford, and Vick. And like others before him, Walton's exploits were reported far and wide in newspapers and in the wire services. When a high-profile program like Virginia Tech issues an official press release dismissing a player, it winds up everywhere, for everyone to see, from SI.com to the Washington Post. Another black eye for VT, despite the fact that Walton wasn't even on scholarship and was buried so far on the depth chart that you'd need a team of tracking dogs just to find him.

Why does Frank Beamer do this? Why does he continually give second and third chances to so many players, only to have them embarrass themselves, the football program, the coach, and the school? I don't know. You'd have to ask him. But it's obvious that he will do anything to give these young men he has grown close to multiple chances to set things right and get back on the right path. And while there are three to four DJ Waltons for every Derrius Monroe, it is the Derrius Monroes of the world that make Frank Beamer believe that compassion is the route to take. Fortunately for Beamer, he is enough of an icon and a winner that his decisions in these matters aren't questioned too loudly, by too many voices.

I'll even admit, as a former hard-liner, that a story like Derrius Monroe gives me pause and makes me think that perhaps these young guys, who do these stupid things for a multitude of reasons, should be given chances to do the right thing before being summarily dismissed. I did some incredibly stupid things myself as a young man, so I know how it can be.

When the whole Vick fracas was going on last year, I had an interesting conversation with a friend who coached at Fork Union for a couple of years in the early 1990s, where he saw some hard, hopeless cases. He also saw some young men come into FUMA from bad backgrounds who made the most of their one shot, moving on from prep school to successful football careers at four-year colleges and universities.

As an assistant football coach, my friend recruited players to FUMA. "What you've got to realize," he told me, "is that these coaches have sat in these young men's living rooms when they were recruiting them, and have told their mothers and fathers that they would take care of their sons when they came to their school � that they would be their fathers away from home."

His point, not explicitly stated, was clear: It's hard to kick your son out of the house.

I'm also reminded of a story John Ballein told us during last summer's fantasy football camp. At that time, Marcus Vick's status was up in the air. He had been suspended from VT for the Fall 2004 semester, but no one knew if he would re-enroll at Tech after that.

We asked Ballein whether Marcus would be back, and he didn't know at the time, but he did shake his head and tell us, "It's tough. I went to see him and his mom just last week, and we had a tough conversation. At the end of it, she was crying, he was crying, I was crying � but we just don't know what's going to happen right now."

The image of Brenda Boddie and Marcus Vick and tough-guy John Ballein all shedding tears over Vick's trials and tribulations (all admittedly self-inflicted) is one that brought home the human side of these stories, to a depth that you never get to see in the headlines and the press releases and the court reports.

Like it or not, Frank Beamer will always err on the side of compassion, and Virginia Tech will take its lumps because of it. There will be more Tony Morrisons and James Crawfords and DJ Waltons, and Beamer and his staff will endure them, in the hopes of finding another Derrius Monroe, someone who will take that second chance and run with it.

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